So my fiance and I had this really cool idea for our registry. We are expecting 150-200 guests for our wedding. In order to be helpful to those guests who want to buy traditional registry gifts, we have set up a small registry with about 40 gifts using myregistry.com (it’s so awesome! you can register gifts from any website!). We have been living together for two years and currently live in a one bedroom condo, which we are not going to expand from for at least four or five years because we are both grad students, so we do not have space for a lot of new stuff.

Another feature of the registry which we would like to use is the “cash gift fund.” You can set it up for anything you want. We were going to create two funds, one as a honeymoon fund and one as a charity fund to our local food pantry, as that is a cause that we feel very passionately about. But we felt bad for making people choose if they want to donate to the charity or help us with our honeymoon, so we thought about calling it a Honeymoon Fund and telling our guests that 25% of the fund will go to the food pantry.

Is that weird or actually inconsiderate to our guests?

I am not asking if a honeymoon fund OR a charity fund is rude. I realize that many bees are very fornal around ettiquette, but that is not the issue to us. The issue is whether it’s actually rude to COMBINE them and determine for the guest how much is going where. We are hoping it makes it not awkward for them, but if you think it’s awkward or rude combined, that guests would rather prefer to choose which to give to, please let me know. Thank you!

I recall attending a wedding where as a guest, there was a sign stating that we could pick the charity to donate to and the money that was going to be spent on the favors was going to charity instead. I didn’t find any offense to that.

Ultimately it’s up to you; sign or no sign. Monetary gifts are given to the couple; how they want to spend it is up to them.

@nawella: I think a local food pantry is neutral enough that it won’t be offensive! I really like the idea, actually. If you were donating to the NRA or ACLU or something, I’d say no, but I think most people are on board with feeding the poor.

This sounds confusing to me. Etiquette aside I don’t think you need to be explaining where things are going. I know if I was a guest though and giving a couple money, I would want it to go to them to buy something, not a charity. So it would turn me off.

I’m a little confused as to why you are donating other people’s money. If you want to give to the food pantry, great! Do it. If you guests want to donate to the food pantry, I’m sure they’ll take care of it on their own time. I’m not sure what it is about weddings these days that have turned into philanthropy-fests.

Is the food pantry very close to your heart? If so, maybe you can find another way to contribute- you could spend the morning of your bachelorette party volunteering there with your bridesmaids before you go out for a night on the town.

@gingerkitten: That’s a really cool idea (the bachelorette party thing!) Part of it is my culture. In Judaism, it is important to always to give back to the community, especially at important life events. We always remember at life events too, that while they day is beautiful and perfect, the world is still not whole and perfect and we have a duty to help heal the world. It is often tradition to give a donation of some of the money that is gifted to the bride and groom to a cause that helps people.

We didn’t want people to have to choose between giving us a gift of money towards our honeymoon fund and making a donation so that was why we were thinking to roll it all in one on our registry web site. And also let people know so they knew where their money was going to, that it’s for us and also for the community.

Now that I’ve written that all out I’m feeling like we should combine them since it’s in the spirit of the event for my culture, although Fiance is not Jewish, but I think he would still want to because it was really his idea originally.

@nawella: If it is part of your culture, by all means! I just see a lot of people parading their charitable contributions to make themselves feel good, and I find that frustrating, especialy if it is at the expense of the guests (whether it is the literal expense of the guests or by saying, “in lieu of ______, we have made a chartiable contribution to ________.”).

Since it is part of your culture, it’s totally fine. Maybe make a note somewhere for your non-Jewish guests explaining that, in your culture, you use this time of prosperity to help others.

“We always remember at life events too, that while they day is beautiful and perfect, the world is still not whole and perfect and we have a duty to help heal the world. It is often tradition to give a donation of some of the money that is gifted to the bride and groom to a cause that helps people.”

That’s really great, the tradition of helping others. I think if you explain that people will feel better about doing it.

@nawella: I think it’s awesome and you should just let people know how you’re using the money you receive. If I was going to an event and found that out, I would give more. I don’t think it’s ever in poor taste to give back to those less fortunate.